Star Wars_ X-Wing 05_ Wraith Squadron - Aaron Allston [87]
Wedge felt a slight change in air pressure. He turned away from the support pillar Kell was rigging; he moved his hand light beam around the room.
Nothing. Just conveyor belts, receiving receptacles, polishing machinery, phototropic shielding equipment.
Then his beam flitted across something moving. He caught the barest glimpse of the thing, something taller than a man, moving fast and silently. He flicked the beam in the direction he thought it had been heading, but there was nothing there.
“Trouble,” he whispered.
He heard a faint whine as Kell activated the timer on the latest charge, then a scrape of metal on leather as Kell drew his blaster.
It came at them from the side, claws and pinchers extended—
16
“Ten.”
Tyria looked up, in the direction of Runt’s call. Runt was still on station near the door to the turbolift. His eyes were wider than normal. “Yes, Six?” she said.
“Did you hear something? We heard something.”
Tyria glanced toward the door to the operations center. Ton Phanan was still on guard duty there, his blaster pistol up and at the ready. He was peering into the op center and did not look alarmed.
She turned back to Runt. “No, nothing.”
The silhouette materialized out of the gloom behind Runt. Before Tyria could say anything it ran him down, smashing him to the floor like a runaway speeder bike.
An ungainly silhouette, round and heavy on top, trailing arms or tentacles like some invertebrate sea life, it came on straight at Tyria.
The attack caught Kell and Wedge off guard. The mass of the attacker hit Kell head-on, slamming him to the metal flooring. Wedge twisted with the attack, took a grazing impact to the arm, and went down rolling; he ended up under a control console, aiming and firing before he’d come to a stop.
His blaster shot was on-target, hitting the attacker dead center. The laser blast charred what it hit but did not penetrate; it merely illuminated the attacker.
It was a floating mass of machinery. The main portion was a roughly spherical body, the top and bottom hemispheres divided by a narrowed equator that Wedge knew allowed the two portions to swivel independently. A half-dozen articulated limbs trailed below it. The designation A3 was painted on the upper hemisphere. The spherical portion was studded with sensor ports and blaster nozzles. The top hemisphere rotated, bringing one of those blaster nozzles in line almost instantly.
Wedge ducked behind the console support as the thing fired. The blaster shot hit the console, burning through it, showering Wedge with sparks.
Imperial probe droid. Wedge came up in a half crouch, running behind this console and the one adjacent. Beyond it he could see Kell’s foot. The big man was not moving.
Wedge grabbed Kell’s leg and hauled him behind the console. The probe droid fired again, the shot melting into slag the metal deck where Kell had just been lying.
Tyria ducked behind one of the carts loaded with TIE fighter viewports. She fired at the oncoming droid, hitting it once, twice beside the characters A2 painted on the upper hemisphere. Surface armor charred a little but the thing was not slowed.
It fired a return shot. It hit the TIE fighter viewport Tyria hid behind. The viewport instantly opaqued and the laser blast did not penetrate; the transparisteel slowly began to fade to glasslike clarity.
She breathed a sign of relief. These viewports had already gone through their phototropic shielding treatment. They’d stop anything short of the blast from a tripod-mounted laser cannon.
The probe droid sideslipped to get around the impediment of the viewport. A blast fired by Phanan hit one of its sensor eyes, shattering it, but the droid returned fire almost instantly; Tyria saw Phanan duck back behind